For years, a pair of red Everlast boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali sat quietly in a private study just off the Oval Office.
Inscribed simply, “To Barack,” the gloves were more than memorabilia for then-President Barack Obama. They were a reminder of resilience.
Soon, the public will get the chance to see them up close.
Obama is loaning the gloves to the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, where they will go on display starting in June.
The announcement comes on the anniversary of one of the most iconic nights in sports history: Feb. 25, 1964. Then known as Cassius Clay, Ali defeated Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion at 22 years old. The upset marked the arrival of a fighter who would reshape not only boxing, but the cultural and political landscape beyond it.
More than six decades later, Ali’s gloves are a tangible reminder of his impact.
For Michael Strautmanis, the chief corporate affairs officer at the Obama Foundation, the gloves carry both personal and historic weight.
“Muhammad Ali is kind of personal to everybody,” Strautmanis told ESPN. “And I knew what that relationship symbolized was very personal to President Obama. So it was something he kept close to him.”
Ali’s 1964 victory was only the beginning. He would become known as “The Greatest,” not just for his speed and precision, but for risking his title and enduring public backlash for his convictions.
“Muhammad Ali’s activism and his skill in the ring feed on one another,” Strautmanis said. “He was willing to absorb punishment inside the ring and outside of it for what he believed in.”
In a 2010 essay and again in a statement following Ali’s death in 2016, Obama reflected on that legacy.
“Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period,” Obama wrote. “… He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes — maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves.”
While the gloves are not tied to a specific fight, Strautmanis describes them as deeply symbolic. For Obama, that example carried weight during moments when, as he once joked, he had to “slug it out here in Washington.”
“There were times when I got beat up a little bit,” Obama quipped while presenting the gloves in a video posted to Facebook on June 9, 2016, days after Ali’s death.
During his presidency, the gloves were displayed in a private room near the Oval Office beneath the iconic photo of Ali towering over Liston — the image captured during their rematch on May 25, 1965, in Lewiston, Maine. Since Obama left the White House, they have remained in his Washington office, where Strautmanis has seen them more often in recent years.
“It never got old to me,” he said. “I would always stop and pause and just think to myself, wow. I’m glad the world will get a chance to have that same experience.”
Their new home at the Obama Presidential Center is indicative of the role sports will play on the museum campus. The Center will feature a full-size NBA regulation basketball court, among other sports-related exhibits and artifacts.
“If one person goes through that museum, sees those gloves, and decides they want to be part of something bigger than themselves,” Strautmanis said, “then we will have more than done our job.”
